


Restless

by ewatsonia



Category: Televoid! (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Sleep deprivation is not fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-20 00:12:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17611745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ewatsonia/pseuds/ewatsonia
Summary: Sleeping was hard for Ian, and not sleeping was pure torture.





	Restless

Sleeping was hard.

Ian sighed and groaned, head in his hands. It shouldn’t be, but it was. He had no way of telling time in here but knew he was far, far past the point where he should’ve gotten some rest and yet still wide awake. He wanted to! He hated this, hated the burning ache behind his eyes, hated zoning out.  ~~Hated that sometimes he saw things that weren’t there…~~

Shaking his head, Ian tried adjusting his position in his orange chair. It was the comfiest place to sleep in this place, though that wasn’t an astronomical feat considering his other options were the floor and an exercise bike. A faint memory lingered in the back of his head of there being a couch in place of the chair at one point, but these days, the way his mind was like, he held doubts of the reality of that. Anything before  _Televoid_ felt fake, if he was being honest.

And there he went, letting his mind wander again thoughts racing instead of relaxing and letting him get the rest he wanted.

Maybe he should try the floor again? At least he’d be able to lie down…

Or he could stay up. Flick the TV on and see if they have anything for him to watch. Ian wasn’t in the best state to host the show but a distraction and some company, that’d be nice. It’d been a while and it’d probably pick his mood back up too.

He blinked a few times, and realized he had already been reaching towards the TV. When had that happened? Before or after he’d just thought about it? That put him on edge, not remembering. He pulled his shaking hand back towards him and sunk back into the chair. Something about that made him really, really not want to turn it on.

But what if he missed something? Would they be so cruel as to try to give him something to watch while the TV was off and he had no way of knowing? His heart pounded. He’d never thought of that. He’d taken to occasionally leaving the TV off for stretches of time, trying to give himself a reprieve from the grating buzzing of the white noise. There was no volume control, so it was the only way. But what if doing that was depriving himself of something to watch?

_How many shows had Ian missed doing that?_

In a flash, the TV was on.

Static. As always. But it eased him somewhat, nothing had been missed, at least not in the moment.

That was another thing, Ian recalled, that kept him up. Sleeping through things. Maybe it was all silly, maybe he had nothing to worry about. He was their little star, they wanted him to put on a show so…surely they wouldn’t do that. What was there to gain?  ] He scrubbed at his eyes and squinted, trying to remember something. Hadn’t the TV come on by itself before too?

Or was that another fake memory?

Ian definitely should sleep. It was too hard to tell what had been real or fake or a dream  ~~or a hallucination~~  when he was like this.

And that damn static wasn’t making any of it easier. It never did. Off the TV went, this time he made sure he knew it was happening when he reached towards it. He knew he’d done that, when he’d done that. Sometimes you just had to cling to the little certainties.

His name was Ian. He was wearing a purple hoodie. He was sitting in an orange chair next to a potted plant. The TV set was off because he’d just turned it off.

That was all real, he could say for sure.

But  _had_ it always been an orange chair?

“Oh my god,  _go to sleep_.” his voice, weak from lack of use, growled at himself. His mind was like that annoying friend at a sleepover that asked weird questions at three in the morning instead of sleeping and kept everyone else up and made you silently decide to never invite them over again.

Huh that was oddly vivid. Ian couldn’t help but wonder if that had actually happened to him at some point. He kind of liked to think so. It was so hard to remember things but he relished the idea that he’d once had a life outside of this empty hellhole. A life hopefully he could someday return to. People that had missed him.

Maybe one of them would even come save him.

It was a nice thought.

Ian closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. Pleasant thoughts on the mind. This was as good a time as any to try to let himself rest. He pulled the hood of his jacket over his head to shut out the ever present light. The light always annoyed him. It was too bright to fall asleep to but too dim to properly read things without squinting.

“ _Shut up_.” Ian muttered at his head. He tugged at the drawstrings, tightening the hood over his face. Happy thoughts. That sleepover that might have been, his parents telling him he was watching too much TV, anything but this place. If he got his mind away he’d finally be able to sleep. Maybe.

Please. Ian just wanted to sleep. It didn’t have to be for long, it could be for ten or even five minutes and he’d be okay. Just… _something_. Something to shake even a fraction of the sleep deprivation weighing on him.

He needed to sleep. He felt…He felt unstable when he didn’t sleep. He was tired and grumpy and felt like he would snap at any moment. What use would he be as a host if he was like that? That hadn’t gone well last time it happened.

His chest seized at the memory, ghosts of pins and needles that had once been all too real pricking his lungs.

No more of that, please. He could be good if he’d…

If he could just fall…

…


End file.
